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Chronicle

Synopsis

What are you capable of?

Three high school students make an incredible discovery, leading to their developing uncanny powers beyond their understanding. As they learn to control their abilities and use them to their advantage, their lives start to spin out of control, and their darker sides begin to take over.

It’s not even the “found footage” angle that makes it feel believable. It’s the great dialogue, good acting, and characters you can identify with – characters whose reactions to supernatural events seem the most… natural.

Chronicle is a brave movie. It’s not afraid of taking the road less travelled. There were a couple of moments when I genuinely admired the creators for trying something different that could have backfired. It never did.

Lastly, and surprisingly, this movie is not about good and evil. It’s about power and powerlessness. We all grapple with the latter, and most of growing up might be learning to accept things that are outside of our influence. You might think that having superpowers would fix that. It turns out, not really: now you just have two things you can neither understand nor control.

As inevitable as the setting sun, eventually two of cinema's most recent obsessions--the found footage and superhero genres--were destined to collide, yet no one surely predicted in such a strong manner as Chronicle. Josh Trank's compact, relatively low budget blend of handheld camerawork and the superhero (or should that be villain?) origin story blasts out of nowhere as a remarkably assured piece of work, telling a story that has it's roots in decades of comic-book lore while being entirely original, and managing to utilise the found footage gimmick in order to tell a character story that starts casually and builds to a gripping climax. The simple fact is Trank's film probably shouldn't have been this good.

Josh Trank’s feature length debut may be one of the best found footage films of the last decennia, but it doesn’t thank that title for its found footage element as the film easily could have done without it. Our main character Andrew Detmer (played by the outstanding upcoming talent Dane DeHaan) is questioned so many times about why he keeps filming all the time that it is almost as if the movie is putting serious question marks around the practicality of its own foundation. Luckily, this detail doesn’t stand in the way of ‘Chronicle’ its rise and shine as the best counter argument against Marvel and DC produced superhero franchises since, uhm, well since ever! Here we have 84 minutes…

'Chronicle' is the film that introduced everyone to the brilliant Dane DeHaan and for that I am grateful. All three of the young leads are great here but DeHaan steals the show. He ensures his character Andrew is someone you root for and his corruption brought about by his new found power is easily the strongest element of the film. His journey from innocent and powerless to an almost unstoppable force is superbly realised and acted to deliver a compelling take on what is essentially a superhero origin story.

The script from Max Landis is impressive with on point humour, likeable characters and a fast paced original story. All three of the characters have their traits and quirks that distinguish…

I have a love/hate relationship with "found footage" films, but it's mostly hate. I have loved some of them, for example [REC], but for the most part I can't get past some of the contrivances that are necessary for these kinds of films to exist. Since I can't get past that, there are moments in the film that completely take me out of the experience.

Chronicle combines two of the biggest trends in Hollywood today - the superhero and found footage movies - to help create something that feels surprisingly fresh. Sure, it is easy to make reference to Akira but I was pleased to see it was a film that neatly blended its influences to create something a little different along the way.

There really aren’t too many original avenues to explore for the superhero movie. We’ve had the big spectacles, the brooding avengers and even the regular Joe nutjobs but what we haven’t really seen is what teenagers would really do with these unlimited powers. Chronicle is at its most entertaining when these kids are just messing around being obnoxious dick heads and…

I went in to this film with zero expectations and came out pleasently surprised. I'm not a fan of the "found footage" trope but this film justifies it in some interesting ways. A more grounded and realistic superhero tale.